IMPORTANT Artwork for professional CMYK printing (as opposed
to "desktop" or inkjet printers) has to follow certain
rules to make it usable. Please click
here to download our PDF artwork guide BEFORE you upload any
finished artwork. It may well save you time and trouble later.
Do you wish to upload any images or artwork?
Please wait a few seconds while the file upload box appears
below. Then fill in your email address and a brief note of
the job details, so that we can identify your file when it reaches
us.
What is artwork? The trade name for the original file created
for any printing work is "artwork", whether it is artistic
or not. Even one word on a sheet is caled artwork. Our specialist
professional studio will prepare artwork for you at very low prices
(after all, you wouldn't want to take your own teeth out would you),
or you can supply it to us yourself if you have the skills and the
right software. However, please remember that producing usable
artwork for printing is highly-skilled and there are many pitfalls.
Just because it looks good on your screen does not mean that it
can be used for professional printing. Please click
here to download our PDF artwork guide BEFORE you start.
If you are supplying your own artwork to us, it is essential that
you follow our artwork
guidelines, to ensure trouble-free printing and to avoid delays
and extra costs.
Artwork supply guidelines.
We prefer to receive a correctly produced, CMYK press-ready PDF,
created with Acrobat Distiller. Please see note below about bleed.
We can also accept finished artwork in the following formats:
Quark Xpress versions 3, 4 5, 6 or 7. Please supply all fonts,
images and graphics in one folder and compress the folder using
Winzip or Stuffit. If using version 8, please backsave to version
7.
CMYK PDFs from professional page layout programs, produced
as press-ready, using Acrobat Distiller, with all fonts embedded.
No colours or images must be RGB.
CMYK PDFs or EPS produced from Adobe InDesign (the PDF
MUST be produced to our specification).
EPS files, produced in Adobe Illustrator. (Please make all fonts
into outlines and ensure that everything within the file is produced
as CMYK NOT RGB).
Adobe Photoshop TIFF or EPS files (Must be created as CMYK,
with a minimum resolution of 300dpi for photographs and images,
800dpi for type. All type should be rasterized. Files can be saved
as JPEGS if you prefer.
Corel Draw files - these must be created as CMYK and exported
as AI files, with all fonts saved as outlines.
Please remember - NEVER work in RGB - all colours used must
be chosen as CMYK colours and all logos and photographs must be
converted to CMYK before being used in your page layout program.
Microsoft Word™
This is a word processing program and it is not intended to be used
for creating finished artwork for printing. It works in RGB only
and does not embed fonts. We can however usually convert Word™
files into a press-ready format at extra cost. Please send us your
file for a quotation.
Advice If you require advice before
producing artwork, please telephone 01902 402693 and ask for our
studio. We can offer initial advice without charge, but reserve
the right to charge for "hand-holding" and reproofing
due to inexperienced designers.
Black solids
Please create solid blacks as 40% cyan and 100% black. We cannot
accept any responsibility for problems caused by any other tint
levels.
Colour matching
Please note that ALL forms of printing (litho, digital or even your
budget desktop inkjet printer) are based on the CMYK colour system,
which has a very narrow range of available colours, compared to
your television, camera or computer monitor. Tthe colours we print
are likely to be different to those seen on your screen and inkjet
printer. If colour is critical or important to you, we recommend
that you send us a print-out to try to match to. Please also note
that whicher company prints your image, printed colours can never
be as bright as those seen on your computer screen. See an explanation
of the CMYK
process.
Graphics resolutionsand
sizes
Please ensure that any clip art, photograph, logo or other image
brought into your layout program is CMYKNOT RGB, is sized to within 10%
of the finished size and was created at a resolution of at least
300dpi.
CMYK
Irrespective of the program used, all images and colours
selected and used MUST be CMYK. All photographs should also
be resized to the correct finished size BEFORE inserting into the
page layout and MUST at at least 300dpi and MUST be converted to
CMYK before use. If you cannot supply CMYK images, our studio can
convert your images and create the finished artwork for you - please
ask for a price. Please remember that most RGB colours will change
quite dramatically if converted to CMYK.
Bleed
Please add 2mm to the finished sizes of each item, to allow for
bleed. i.e. business cards that have a finished size of 85mm x 55mm
should be supplied as 89mm x 59mm. We trim off the 2mm "bleed"
after printing, so please remember that no type or anything of importance
must be near the bleed edge. For production and artistic reasons,
we recommend that all wording is kept at least 5mm away from the
edge of the finished work (i.e. 7mm away from the bleed edge).
Prices
Time is money and our staff have to be paid like everyone else.
Our prices are keen and our quotations assume that any artwork supplied
by or on behalf of our customer is produced to professional standards
and that it follows the industry standards of images being 300dpi
minimum, having all fonts embedded and being entirely produced in
CMYK. Please ensure that whoever creates the finished artwork reads
these guidelines before supplying any artwork to us.
While we try to be as helpful as we can, we have to
reserve the right to charge the studio time after the first proof,
for correcting, altering, amending, fault-finding, hand-holding
and re-proofing work supplied and/or re-supplied by inexperienced
designers. Any despatch or delivery times and dates discussed are
totally dependent upon the artwork being usable when initially supplied
and will naturally be subject to change if problems are found within
the files supplied.
Advice We are always happy to offer initial advice on the best way
to prepare your artwork, Just fill in our enquiry
form or telephone our studio on 01902 402693
